![]() Like Jimmie Rodgers, Buddy Baker was gone from the world at only thirty-five. ![]() Baker died from peritonitis, resulting from a perforated ulcer, in Barberton, Ohio, on May 24, 1937, and his body was shipped back home to Alabama to be buried in his family’s plot in Mobile’s Magnolia Cemetery. Probably in 1932, he married a woman named Jessie. Later, he seems to have taken up in Ohio, where he found work as a welder for Babcock and Wilcox. At the time of his recording career, he was living with his family in Mobile, Alabama, and began performing on radio station WODX around the time of its inauguration in 1930. His four surviving recordings depict an artist with a clever sense of diction and a penchant for simplistic scat singing, and a unique approach to a guitar method typical of his time. Baker returned to the Victor studio one year later in Camden, New Jersey to wax four more, including “It’s Tough on Everybody” and “The Rambling Cowboy”, but this time, none were released. Of the four unissued sides were “I Want My Mammy”, “Nobody Knows What’s On My Mind Blues”, and “Razor Jim”. Of those eight, only four were released: “Penitentiary Blues” and “Box Car Blues” on Victor 21549, and “Matrimonial Intentions” and “Alimony Blues” on Victor V-40017. He traveled to Chicago in June of 1928 to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and cut six sides on the twenty-first and two more the following day. In his teenage years he worked in a mill, but he pursued a career in music when he came of age. Baker, and was born on May 17, 1902, in Escambia County, Alabama, the son of John and Rebecca Baker. Research reveals that “Buddy” was in fact Ernest H. Baker pictured in the 1930 Victor “Old Familiar Tunes” catalog.
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